o Military Ever notice how UFO sightings tend to conveniently happen on or around military bases? Yeah, that's not a coincidence. Be it weather balloon, aerial spy cam, or rogue aircraft, people are more than happy to assume that the mystery circling overhead is alien-rather than military-made-"especially" during times of national paranoia. THE BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES Times of paranoia like, say, WWII, for instance. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the country's sense of security was shattered. So three months later, when a weather balloon went casually wafting over Los Angeles in 1942, hysteria naturally followed suit. What's a terrified city to do? Why, conduct a massive military airstrike against the interloper, of course-resulting in this iconic photograph of what was later dubbed The Battle of Los Angeles. Initially the shadow in the sky was thought to be another attack coming over from Japan, but at a press conference shortly after the incident, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox quickly put that rumor to rest, calling it a "false alarm." Which then left media personnel free to publish all sorts of "reports" of extraterrestrial coverup. And remember-after WWII, people were shaken. They were ready to believe anything. The Battle of Los Angeles acclimated civilians to the notion that alien sightings were not only plausible but likely. It allowed for a more comfortable way to explain away their fears, and the instances only picked up speed. THE ROSWELL INCIDENT One of the most notorious alleged UFO sightings (and the inspiration for a criminally underrated television show), Roswell, all started in July of 1947 when local ranch foreman William Brazel stumbled upon a giant ditch hundreds of feet long and filled with debris-namely rubber strips, tin foil, paper, scotch tape, and toughened sticks. Since the bizarre mess was on the property where he worked, Brazel promptly reported it to the authorities, and the account eventually made its way over to the Roswell Army Airfield base. The base's commander denounced the mess to be nothing more than a weather balloon gone wrong, encouraging everyone to forget about the mini-dump and go about their business. So of course, conspiracy theorists decided it was the perfect time for a good, ol' fashioned UFO rabble-rousing. Stanton Friedman, a physicist and amateur ufologist (it's a word), was one of those noble crusaders for the alien origins explanation-it's just that he decided to wait a good 30 years before weighing in because, well, no one really knows why. After interviewing Major Jesse Marcel-one of the site's original inspectors-in 1978, Friedman got what he was looking for. Marcel claimed that the entire event was a military coverup of an alien spaceship. Bingo! Glenn Dennis, a mortician, also piped in (another 11 years after that) and claimed that dead bodies had been removed from the site and taken to an airbase. But apparently, these people weren't totally insane (or at the very least, totally wrong). Because there was so much controversy over what "actually" happened, two separate official government investigations took place-one in 1994 and the other in 1995. The first confirmed that the cause had indeed been a weather balloon; the military was testing them in a classified program that used sensitive lights to try to detect Russian nuclear tests. The second cleared up that whole "dead bodies" issue; the test had used dummies during parachute testing, dummies which then had to be removed. After Roswell, interest in potential alien spacecrafts skyrocketed, with almost 800 sightings occurring in the weeks that directly followed. As with the Battle of Los Angeles, the international climate probably played a role; this was mid-Cold War, when Americans were well-primed for a little extra paranoia and perpetual fear. While photographs of UFOs are now are relatively rare and met with considerable skepticism, back then, the claims were accepted in droves. Each UFO sighting was merely another log tossed on top of an already hefty pile of anxiety-inducing fodder. THE MYSTERIOUS LUBBOCK LIGHTS In August and September of 1951, the small town of Lubbock, Texas enjoyed its own brief stint in the UFO spotlight. The Texas Technical College professors spotted a group of 20-30 some-odd lights floating overhead the night of August 25. The next week, student Carl Hart noticed a similar phenomenon in the sky and snapped photos, which the local newspaper then published and eventually sent nationwide. Lieutenant Edward Ruppelt from the Air Force's Project Blue Book (the government agency set up for the express purpose of UFO investigations) analyzed the images and ultimately declared them not to be a hoax-but he didn't believe them to be of alien origin, either. Rather Ruppelt believed that the vision had been nothing more than streetlights being reflected off the underbellies of a flock of plovers. Witnesses in the area supported this explanation, agreeing that they had in fact seen large flocks of migratory birds and had even her some squawking. Still, others maintained that the lieutenant was simply attempting to cover up the training exercises of the Air Port's new flying wing. Whichever the correct explanation might be, however, certainly doesn't include aliens.
o Acts of Nature Pink UFO: A stack of altocumulus lenticularis clouds hovers over the Alpujarra Mountains in southern Spain, stained by the rays of the setting sunPicture: IAN DENNIS These little alien scares down't necessarily have to come from the hand of man, though. Our world is fully capable of creating its own absolutely beautiful, stunning phenomenons that can pretty easily terrify any witnesses who don't understand what's going on in the sky above them. Generally, as science advances, we have fewer and fewer instances of people reporting suspicious, potentially otherworldly activity in the wake of a natural occurrence. Still, it's curious how quick we are to jump to the conclusion that a phenomenal vision came from some alien being when, in fact, it just came from our very own phenomenal world. PORTUGAL'S MIRACLE OF THE SUN In 1917, 30,000 people in Fatima, Portugal supposedly witnessed the "Miracle of the Sun," an event that was supposed to predict the appearance of the Virgin Mary. Crowds gathered to find themselves staring at a cloudy sky for hours. But when the clouds finally did part and the sun came bearing down, everybody simultaneously experienced radiating, multicolored lights that came spiraling downwards. And cue collective panic now. Understandably, though, and to this clearly devoutly religious population, the bright, shiny lights could very well have seemed like a sign of the End Times. Nearly 100 years later, we're aware of the fact that staring at the sun for such a long of a period of time has the potential to directly induce mass hysteria and hallucinations. But hey, they were looking for a little excitement; at least they got what they came for. The severe retina damage was just a bonus. MORE...Related Articles * 5 Things I've noticed about UFOs (illuminutti.com) * The Lie Is Out There: Three Types of Alien Encounters (gizmodo.com) * Roswell's UFO Incident: What Really Happened There? (geeksugar.com) * Best UFO Sightings June 2013 (myshieldmyrefuge.wordpress.com) * Roswell UFO Incident Gets the Interactive Google Doodle Treatment - PC Magazine (pcmag.com) * UFO Real Alien Caught On Tape In Russia 1957 (disclose.tv) * Appalachia is a Hotbed of UFO Activity (mysteriousuniverse.org)
